Newsletter

All of the Savannah-Chatham public school system’s eighth-graders took a state writing test in January, and a whole lot of papers came back covered in red ink.

Although the district has maintained a 73 percent rate overall for the last four years, Chatham County students fell 9 points behind the state on average and outcomes for Black and Hispanic students dropped. The scores at East Broad K-8 and DeRenne Middle were so low some board members asked the district to intervene. East Broad eighth-graders had a 54 percent pass rate and the pass rate at DeRenne was 51 percent. DeRenne experienced a 13 percentage point drop from last year and its writing scores have dropped 20 percentage points over the last four years.

“This is a cry for help if I’ve ever seen one,” Board member Connie Hall said.

Linda Olson, executive director of curriculum, said students were given a specific writing prompt and asked to write an expository or persuasive essay. Some local students may not have fared so well because they couldn’t relate to the essay topic, Olson said. She went on to explain that a student who had never been to the beach may not have been able to write an essay about a day at the shore.

But she said next year teachers will receive additional training and all middle grades English and language arts teachers will attend a Common Core writing instruction workshop.

Some board members asked that full-time writing coaches be assigned to struggling schools. They wanted to know how much time students spend writing and what writing processes are being used in the classroom.

“I believe I learned to write because I had to write a lot,” Board President Joe Buck said.

Board member Shawn Kachmar said the four-year 20 percentage point decline at DeRenne points to systemic problems.

“I don’t know what’s going on over there,” Kachmar said. “...Some of these scores cry out for specific direct intervention.”

ON THE WEB

To see how eighth-graders fared at each school go to http://bit.ly/1057Bzp.

2013 Georgia Grade 8 Writing Assessment

School Meets/Exceeds

Standard 1 year

change 4 year

change

Bartlett 75% 4 15

Coastal 87% 4 19

DeRenne 51% -13 -20

East Broad K-8 54% * *

Ellis K-8 96% -4 2

Garrison K-8 99% 6 *

Georgetown K-8 76% * *

Godley Station K-8 81% 10 *

Hesse K-8 80% 0 *

Hubert 64% 3 20

Isle of Hope K-8 71% -5 *

Mercer 61% 0 1

Myers 78% -4 -2

Oglethorpe Charter 93% 2 -1

Southwest 70% -8 -1

West Chatham 63% -4 7

*Eighth-grade program has not existed long enough to include this data